A silver halide color photographic material (hereinafter referred to as a color photographic material or a color photographic light-sensitive material) is processed, after imagewise exposure, by a color development step and a desilvering step.
In the color development step, light-exposed silver halide grains are reduced with a color developing agent to form silver. At the same time, the oxidation product of the color developing agent formed reacts with coupler(s) to form image-forming dye(s).
In the subsequent desilvering step, the developed silver formed in the color development step is oxidized to a silver salt with a bleaching agent having an oxidizing action (i.e., the bleach). The silver salt is then removed from the light-sensitive layers together with the unreacted silver halides by a fixing agent which forms soluble silver (i.e., the fix). The bleach and the fix are carried out separately in a bleach step and fix step or are carried out simultaneously in a bleach-fix or blix step. These processing steps are described in James, The Theory of Photographic Process, 4th edition, 1977.
In addition to the foregoing basic processing steps, various supplementary steps are added for the purpose of keeping the photographic and physical qualities of the dye images formed or maintaining the stability of processings. They include a wash step, a stabilization step, a hardening step, and a stop step.
The foregoing processing steps are generally carried out by an automatic processor. Recently, a small-sized automatic processor called "minilabo" are used in stores, and quick processing services for customers are increasing.
Accordingly, there has been a growing demand for quick processing steps, particularly relating to the bleach step.
Furthermore, since photographic processing has been practiced in various places with different requirements, waste liquids of the processing solutions be a significant problem.
For example, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid ferric complex salts which have hitherto been used as a bleaching agent have the fundamental defect that their oxidizing power is weak. In spite of improvements such as the use of a bleach accelerator (e.g., the addition of the mercapto compound described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,138,842), the foregoing object of quick bleaching has not yet been attained. Also, in the case of using such bleach accelerators, the bleaching faculty deteriorates over the passage of time by the deterioration of the bleach accelerator. Consequently, the amount of the replenisher for the bleach solution can not be reduced. Accordingly, the object of greatly reducing the amount of waste liquids has not been attained.
Bleaching agents capable of attaining quick bleaching include a ferricyanide, iron chloride, a bromate, etc. However, they can not be widely used since ferricyanides cause environmental problems, iron chloride causes a corrosion of metals, etc., and hence is inconvenient for handling, and bromates cause unstability of the liquid.
Accordingly, a bleaching agent which can be easily handled and can attain quick bleaching without causing discharge of waste liquid has been desired.
Recently, as a bleaching agent satisfying the foregoing need, a 1,3-diaminopropanetetraacetic acid ferric complex salt has been suggested.
However, bleaching agents have various problems. One of them is the problem of causing a bleach fog during bleaching. As a method of reducing the bleach fog, it has been suggested to add a buffer to a bleach solution as described, e.g., in JP-A-1-213657 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). However, the level of the improvement by that method is still unsatisfactory. In particular, since a highly active color developer is used in quick processing a color development for a time not longer than three minutes, severe bleach fog occurs.
Also, when a bleach solution containing the 1,3-diaminopropanetetraacetic acid ferric complex salt is used, an increase of stains during the storage of color images after processing occurs.
Also, for simply and quickly carrying out desilvering processing, a blix step comprising a simultaneous bleach step and fix step is desired. But a blix solution containing the foregoing 1,3-diaminopropanetetraacetic acid ferric complex salt is too poor in stability of the liquid for practical use.
Furthermore, in the case of a bleach solution containing a 1,3-diaminopropanetetraacetic acid ferric complex salt, the color of the magenta dye in the color images increases, changing the gradation thereof during the storage of the color images after processing.
Also, in the case of carrying out bleach processing for a far shorter period of time, when the bleach solution containing the 1,3-diaminopropanetetraacetic acid ferric complex salt is used, the cyan dye in the imaged portions becomes a leuco dye causing inferior recoloring.
Thus, a processing composition containing a novel bleaching agent in place of the foregoing bleaching agent and a process using such a composition have been desired in the art.